Being there. Tele-immersion could profoundly alter long-distance communication, allowing a new kind of intermingled presence of people geographically separated. Despite Jaron Lanier’s current skepticism about cybertechnological advances, a recent experiment was the culmination of a three-year National Tele-Immersion Initiative project he directed. It seems a natural next extension of his pioneering work in VR. Plans include building in haptics — touch simulation — to allow a fuller simulation of tele-presence at a distance. Consider, first, the demand for bandwidth expansion this would stimulate if realized. And some of the novel uses to which it might be put.

The fast-food

chain McDonalds showed interest at one early workshop… McDonalds envisioned fitting tele-immersion booths in

its restaurants so people away from home could have dinner

with their family. “The technology for that is not that far off”… The gaming industry is another potential user.

Players could tele-immerse themselves in a virtual reality

environment, chasing monsters or firing phasers at each other.

[And then there’s another, even more obvious, use about which many will likely soon be, if not already, salivating…] New Scientist

US concern over new Palestinian ‘alliance’. Seeming new coordination of plans between Yasser Arafat loyalists and more radical Palestinian groups to direct the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza has reportedly involved the release by Palestinian civil authorities of dozens of jailed Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. BBC [Change of heart, failure of will, or loss of control by Arafat vis a vis his peacemaking role?]

Court orders Texas death-row inmate resentenced. Til now, I hadn’t heard of much, if any, effective judicial review of the seemingly rampant abuses associated with Texas capital sentencing. Nando Times

Now Jupiter’s got a great white spot Three giant storms on Jupiter have merged to form a massive

storm half the size of the planet’s famous Great Red Spot.

Observations of the new “great white spot” could reveal if this

was how the Red Spot formed… New Scientist

Fast-Forward Election: the way the debates were meant to be watched.

That

little FF button liberated me. No longer am I

enslaved by the spin doctors and news

analysts. No longer do I have to listen to the

what Bush and Gore actually say. In

fast-forward, it’s the more basic stuff of life.

You know, the nervous twitches, subliminal

thoughts and repetitious grimaces.

Sped up, Gore, with his quick and jutting

movements, is a cross between Max

Headroom and the Tin Man. He’s a twitchy

Vulcan struggling with “technical difficulties.”

Bush’s perpetually droopy grin shows a

conniving boy caught with his hand in the

cookie jar. He’s a used car salesman, asking

us: “Hey folks, what do I have to do to get

you to vote for me today?”

In double time, their running mates are also

transparently clear. Joseph Lieberman,

whose mouth moves but little else, is a

sappy ventriloquist’s dummy. Dick Cheney,

folded hands and sideways glances, is a

plotting old woman. Getting It

U.S. learns of terrorist plans; analyst quits over Cole warning. “During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, senators said that a Pentagon intelligence expert on terrorism in the Persian Gulf warned of

possible terrorist attacks on U.S. forces there before the bombing of the USS Cole, but that higher-ups failed to pass the information to military

commanders.

The intelligence official, whose name was not disclosed, resigned in protest the day after the Cole attack.” Nando Times

Poor sportsmanship via viral transmission?

Ford shows off newest bells, whistles for safety, “(including) a tiny video camera in the rearview mirror linked to a cell phone and a crash sensor. If the car is in a wreck, its computer

sends out an alert routed to the nearest emergency dispatcher.

That dispatcher would get data from the car regarding the position the vehicle came to rest in, the severity of the crash, the number of people in

the car, the number wearing seat belts and even a rough estimate of injuries. The camera would transmit two photos of the interior – one taken

just before the crash and one taken just after – so doctors would know what kind of injuries were suffered.” Some privacy advocates have expressed concerns about a camera taking pictures of you every few minutes… AP

Protesters storm Justice Department entrance:

“More than 100

protesters stormed the entrance of the U.S.

Justice Department building Wednesday

afternoon to demand the prosecution of a

police officer who killed a college student.” CNN

“All of these people are here for poetry? If you locked me in a room full of poets, I’d be looking for any way to get out.” CSM

Silly New-Age Pseudo Science Gets a Sound Thrashing. A review of “veteran

science writer and playful gadfly” Martin Gardner’s Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? ‘Most of the essays…are “attacks on far-out cases of

pseudoscience.” Gardner’s targets are generally not the religious notions or

superstitions of people swept along by their ancient cultures but phony science

promulgated by, and believed in, by people who should know better. Thus he does

not attack the pious millions who, in Brazil, are devoted to the cult of the Virgin

Mary that they celebrate in Belen on the Amazon every October. Rather, he

skewers such “preposterous” claims that “positions of stars correlate with character

and future events.” ‘ LA Times

Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners: “One of the most reliable and perplexing findings from surveys of sexual behavior is that men report substantially more sexual partners

than women do….We find that prostitute women are underrepresented in the national surveys. Once their

undersampling and very high numbers of sexual partners are factored in, the discrepancy disappears. Prostitution’s role in the discrepancy

is not readily apparent because men are reluctant to acknowledge that their reported partners include prostitutes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [Is this restating the obvious?]

Children With Mental Problems Not Getting the Care They Need. Federal health officials, mental health experts and mental health advocacy groups agree. The problem is multifactorial, involving families’ lack of resources or adequate insurance, shortages of qualified professionals, and the complexities and fragmentation of the care delivery system. Last month’s conference on the issue convened by US Surgeon General David Satcher is expected to result in a national action plan by the end of this year. Journal of the American Medical Association

My infatuation with Phil Agre‘s work only begins with the Red Rock Eaters’ mailing list, to items from which I often link. If you read my blog, you may find something of use or of interest on this list of his recent or forthcoming work (the annotations are his, not mine):

Life after cyberspace, EASST Review 18(2),

1999, pages 3-5.

Yesterday’s tomorrow, Times Literary Supplement,

3 July 1998, pages 3-4.

The Internet and

public discourse, First Monday 3(3), 1998.

Advice for undergraduates considering graduate

school A brief how-to, perhaps ten pages, for undergraduates who

think they might want to go to graduate school. I originally wrote it for

students in my own department, but over time I have extended it in response

to comments from people in other fields. It emphasizes the value of getting

involved in research and is especially intended for sophomores and juniors.

Designing effective action alerts for the

Internet This is a guide to designing political action alerts. It

also suggests what kinds of badly designed action alerts you should refrain

from forwarding to others.

Find your voice Writing for a webzine: how to

build a public voice on the Internet that communicates your values in a way

that people can understand.

Hosting a speaker A guide for graduate

students concerning the practicalities of playing host to a visiting

speaker, for example in a weekly seminar series.

How to help someone use a computer

A short set of practical guidelines on helping people use computers without

oppressing them. I learned most of these ideas from teachers of young

children, but they apply equally well to anyone.

Information and institutional change

This is an annotated syllabus for an upper-division undergraduate class

that I taught at UCLA in the spring of 2000 on the role of information

and information technology in the process of institutional change.

The literature on institutions My

research takes an institutional perspective on the place of information

technology in people’s lives, and this article summarizes the literature

in sociology and and political science about the concept of an institution.

Networking on the network A detailed

guide to professional networking both on and off the Internet. Although

written principally for advanced graduate students and others in academia,

the underlying principles apply widely.

Cyberspace as American culture, to appear in Science

as Culture.

Designing a wired life, paper prepared for the WebNet

2000 Conference.

Growing a democratic culture: John Commons on the

wiring of civil society, to appear in David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins,

eds, Democracy and New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.

Hazards of design: Ethnomethodology and the ritual

order of computing, submitted to Mind, Culture, and Activity.

Imagining the wired university, paper presented

at the Symposium on the Future of the University, University of Newcastle,

September 2000.

Portents of planning: A critical reading of the first

paragraph of Miller, Galanter, and Pribram’s Plans and the Structure of

Behavior, paper presented at the Conference on Narrative in the Human

Sciences University of Iowa, July 1990.

Writing and representation, to appear in Michael Mateas

and Phoebe Sengers, eds, Narrative Intelligence, Amsterdam: John

Benjamins, 2001.

I guess I expected that a number of you would react with surprise (or alarm??) to my Ira Glass blink below. To each her own, of course…

Evidence of ‘life after death’. Several people have blogged this link but, oh man, is it wishful thinking to think that this study is anything of the kind! At least there’s nothing to suggest differently in this BBC coverage; I’d love to read the research paper to see if it’s more convincing. I’ll post a blink to it if I can find it. In the meanwhile, here’s a piece by the lead researcher, Sam Parnia, on near-death experiences.

Air travelers face blood-clot dangers. “Economy-class syndrome” is a new focus of concern after an otherwise-healthy 28 year-old British air traveller collapsed and died from pulmonary complications of a deep venous thrombosis (DVT) after a flight back from Sydney.

People at risk include older fliers, those who are

overweight and pregnant women.

To lower risk, doctors suggest an aspirin before

flying to thin the blood, lots of water while in flight to

stay hydrated and exercise.

“Get out of the seat periodically, maybe every half

hour, and walk around…(W)hile in the seat, massage

the feet upward, massage the calves, and massage the

lower thighs.” MSNBC

Emerging disease news: Ebola may shut off immune defenses. Researchers report the identification of a protein that Ebola uses to antagonize the body’s secretion of interferon, necessary in orchestrating the immune response against the invading virus. MSNBC

Ira Glass is coming to San Diego to give a lecture, so here’s this puff piece in a local paper about how he’s the hippest thing on National Public Radio. According to him. Trying to be ironic about it doesn’t make a hipper-than-thou attitude any less execrable. It would only be a slight exaggeration if I said I never move faster than when I reach to retune the radio when he comes on. And I wrote to my local NPR station to tell them I wasn’t going to contribute to them anymore as long as their fundraisers featured his smug, self-satisfied pitches with their vicious undertones of humiliation to less with-it listeners. The station manager tried to tell me I don’t have a sense of humor (which I found very funny).

Not happy with one definition? OneLook® Dictionaries lets you look up a word in hundreds of online dictionaries with several clicks. Over in the left column, I’ve added a lookup box that gets you there too.

Japan’s new ‘salaryman’ Kintaro: think Dilbert gone ballistic. Christian Science Monitor

Physicians’ Attitudes About Involvement in Lethal Injection for Capital Punishment

The majority of 482 physicians surveyed approved of most aspects of participation in executions disallowed by the American Medical Association, “indicating that they believed it is acceptable in

some circumstances for physicians to kill individuals against their

wishes. It is possible that the lack of stigmatization by colleagues

allows physicians to engage in such practices.” Archives of Internal Medicine

Chameleons suck. New Scientist

Today’s the day the swallows leave San Juan Capistrano. Until March 19th…

Nader supporters urge at least some to vote for Gore. A group calling itself “Nader’s Raiders for Gore” accuses Nader of going back on a pledge to campaign only in those states where a vote for him would not hurt Gore’s chances. ‘”It is now clear that you might well give the White House to

Bush. As a result, you would set back significantly the social

progress to which you have devoted your entire, astonishing

career,” the group wrote Friday in its open letter to the

consumer advocate.’ The appeal has been rejected by Nader’s press secretary. “Greens for Gore” has taken a similar stance. “If the last minute exit or public opinion polls in your state

show Gore or Bush clearly projected to win, then vote Nader. If

it is too close or undecided at that point, then vote for Al

Gore.” I’ve previously blinked Nader advisor Steve Cobble’s “Your Vote Doesn’t Matter,” suggesting that progressives vote for Nader in states where (and only where) one of the major candidates has locked in the electoral college votes already. Singer Ani Difranco, a Nader supporter, has written an open letter urging Oregonians to vote for Gore.

An article in The New Republic suggests that Nader may actually be seeking a Gore defeat by working so hard for swing state votes. The theory is that a Bush presidency would galvanize the progressive movement. [The last time I remember anyone reasoning like that was when people jokingly suggsted we might bring on the Revolution by electing George Wallace!]

These CNN maps show the status of the races for each state’s electoral votes. They will be updated regularly until Election Day, and can help you decide whether, and how, to waste your very own vote. Here are the current “tossup” states:

Chemtrails? I stumbled onto this site which suggests that, if you’re among those noticing more contrails these days, some of them may represent secret government experimental spraying campaigns over populated areas, which are making numbers of people feel ill.

These I feel are in fact the deployment and

experiments with military countermeasures against Bio-Warfare.

Another probably smaller percentage still are weather control

experiments. Both of these programs have been outlined in the

defense budget proposals and have been funded by DARPA as has

been established by our research and that of other independent

researchers. I feel what we are seeing here are the deployment of

both the Oily Water detergent based bio-warfare countermeasures,

and the antigen producing spores being developed by MaxGen under

DARPA contract.

It is these programs and their unforeseen or possibly considered

acceptable effects that are causing the wide spread suffering felt by a

certain percentage of the population.

Bye-bye, Barry McCaffrey. Ariana Huffington bids a fond farewell as another drug czar bites the dust. Only this one left a legacy of the U.S. boondoggle involvement in the Colombian “interdiction”, which may be stacking up to be our biggest and most ill-advised foreign misadventure since Indochina. Salon

New battleground: resistance moves into cyberspace. The Lebanese Daily Star reports on Hezbollah accusations of an Israeli denial of service attack on Hezbollah’s website after the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers on October 7th. Noting that a large number of these increased “hits” came from North American sites, the Hezbollah webmaster concluded, “It’s obvious that the Americans are conspiring with Israel to cripple our site.” (It’s obvious he doesn’t understand distributed denial of service attacks.) The article includes links to mirrors of the Hezbollah site in case it’s down. [via The Web Today]

Al Gore knows that some of you peek behind the scenes of his campaign. Read the HTML code of this page from his official campaign website and see a special message for you. [via Memepool]

Nader supporters urge at least some to vote for Gore. A group calling itself “Nader’s Raiders for Gore” accuses Nader of going back on a pledge to campaign only in those states where a vote for him would not hurt Gore’s chances. ‘”It is now clear that you might well give the White House to

Bush. As a result, you would set back significantly the social

progress to which you have devoted your entire, astonishing

career,” the group wrote Friday in its open letter to the

consumer advocate.’ The appeal has been rejected by Nader’s press secretary. “Greens for Gore” has taken a similar stance. “If the last minute exit or public opinion polls in your state

show Gore or Bush clearly projected to win, then vote Nader. If

it is too close or undecided at that point, then vote for Al

Gore.” I’ve previously blinked Nader advisor Steve Cobble’s “Your Vote Doesn’t Matter,” suggesting that progressives vote for Nader in states where (and only where) one of the major candidates has locked in the electoral college votes already. Singer Ani Difranco, a Nader supporter, has written an open letter urging Oregonians to vote for Gore.

An article in The New Republic suggests that Nader may actually be seeking a Gore defeat by working so hard for swing state votes. The theory is that a Bush presidency would galvanize the progressive movement. [The last time I remember anyone reasoning like that was when people jokingly suggsted we might bring on the Revolution by electing George Wallace!]

These CNN maps show the status of the races for each state’s electoral votes. They will be updated regularly until Election Day, and can help you decide whether, and how, to waste your very own vote. Here are the current “tossup” states:

John Horgan on his book, The End of Science: “(I) thought it might be useful for me to

present a succinct summary of my

end-of-science argument as well as a

rebuttal of 10 common

counter-arguments.” An interview by John Brockman.

“I believe that this map of reality that scientists

have constructed, and this narrative of

creation, from the big bang through the

present, is essentially true. It will thus be as

viable 100 or even 1,000 years from now as it is

today. I also believe that, given how far

science has already come, and given the limits

constraining further research, science will be

hard-pressed to make any truly profound

additions to the knowledge it has already

generated. Further research may yield no more

great revelations or revolutions but only

incremental returns.”

Horgan feels that scientists have turned from true science, in which investigation converges on the truth, to what he calls ironic science, ” a speculative, non-empirical mode that… resembles

literature or philosophy or theology in that it

offers points of view, opinions, which are, at

best, ‘interesting,’ which provoke further

comment” but are no longer empirically proveable. As examples, he cites superstring theory, the Gaia hypothesis, parallel universe theories in cosmology, and almost the whole of psychology and the social sciences. “Some observers say all these untestable,

far-fetched theories are signs of science’s

vitality and boundless possibilities. I see them

as signs of science’s desperation and terminal

illness.”

[Personally, I think Horgan’s faith in empiricism and “capital-T” truth is naive.The objection to his thesis he dismisses least convincingly is the charge that it is itself ironic science. The “end of science” is not upon us, because “science” as he envisions it never really existed in the first place. I often find this shortcoming in science writers who don’t do, or haven’t done, science themselves. Having invested so much in their career choice, their faith must be unassailable to avoid painful self-doubt.] The Edge

Loch Ness webcams, both surface and underwater (although when I went to the site, the surface camera wasn’t working). Park this in the corner of your screen and do some monster spotting.

Gendercide Watch, a fascinating resource confronting historical and contemporary gender-selective mass killings around the world, whether against

women (the Nanjing massacre, female infanticide) or men (slaughters in Rwanda and Colombia).

There is no new new thing. USA Today

Hacker Site Raises GM’s Hackles. After 2600‘s recent high-profile loss in the court case brought by the MPAA over its posting of links to DeCSS (which defeats the copy-protection scheme on DVD’s), it is again courting legal danger by registering unflattering domain names referring to large corporations. General Motors demands that the magazine turn over the rights to fuckGeneralMotors.com on trademark infringement grounds. 2600 defends its actions on free speech grounds. It has also registered FuckNBC.com and VerizonReallySucks.com. Interestingly, Verizon, which has recently been going after unauthorized uses of its name on the web, decided that the 2600-registered domain did not violate fair use principles. I’m not a lawyer but it’s hard to see how GM or anyone else could make a case that these infringe on their trademark rights, any more than, say, a book about a company that uses that company’s name in its title. Wired

The rule of opinion and the fate of ideas: “What are the prospects of science in a society that is steeped in a democratic

ethos, professes to admire science, and expects great things of scientists,

but which, notwithstanding a massive educational system, comprehends

science rather poorly?”

The news, as I see it, is bad. To put it plainly, despite

three centuries of co-evolution, despite frequent episodes of mutual

encouragement and support, the culture of modern democracy and that of

modern science are in many ways incongruent. Orthodox history of science

regards certain developments as the most sweeping and fateful of triumphs:

the Copernican Revolution that culminated in Newton’s synthesis, the

Darwinian revelation that humanity is an adventitious consequence of the

convolution of biology and history, the relentless explication of biological

process, including those of the human organism, in terms of chemistry and

physics.

The depressing, though often unspoken, truth is that these are regarded as

sovereign insights only within the relatively tiny community of the scientifically

well-educated. In the larger society, even Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and

Newton are more accepted than understood. It is hardly necessary to remark

that Darwin, as a historical figure and as the symbol of an idea, is widely

reviled. The ongoing revolution in genetics and molecular biology, while

doubtless deserving of intelligent ethical scrutiny, has often been received with

what amounts to superstitious terror.

Annals of the Age of Depravity: Woman Suspected of Flushing Infant Down Toilet Reuters

Ignore the undecided — “Voters who haven’t made

up their minds yet are a

little like the O.J. jury —

they’re clearly not paying

attention and shouldn’t be

trusted with an important

decision.” It’s inconceivable to me, and to this columnist, that those who remain undecided until the last minute are intelligently deliberating about differences between the candidates. Instead, the campaign is shaped by and the candidates held hostage to the least discerning of voters, drawing the candidates to migrate their position toward the middle rather than play to their differences. Salon

A Minor Political Screed ‘The following piece came to (a Slashdot poster) as a personal letter from

David Brin. David is a prominent scientist and author of best-selling novels like

The Postman, who has shared entertaining and provocative views with us in the past. His letter

struck us as so biting and timely that we asked permission to post it before the whole Slashdot

community, in order to provoke your rambunctious discussion. David graciously agreed, on

condition that you all remember, it was written first of all as a private person sharing his

“cranky political opinions” with a few friends. “It goes over the top in a few places,” he

warned. “First draft expressions of outrage tend to be that way.” So as friends, let’s not get too

vexed with him. Above all David is interesting, as usual….’

Will this be the winter sensation after you stow your Razor when the snow flies?

Where ‘caught in the crossfire’ can leave no room for doubt: ‘When I read the word “crossfire”, I reach for my pen. In the

Middle East, it almost always means that the Israelis have

killed an innocent person.’ Independent

CDRW Troubleshooting: a four-part series on troubleshooting — when your Windows system has been perturbed by the installation of a CDRW drive; when data isn’t written properly, etc.

Slate‘s “explainer”: What Are Hamas and Hezbollah?

The Israel Defense Forces responds to the killing of the Palestinian boy. “The IDF wishes to express its sorrow at the death of the child and any incident in which lives are lost, but emphasizes that the Palestinians make cynical use of children’s lives by sending them to throw stones under cover of Palestinian fire that endangers their lives.”

Britannica.com‘s navel-gazing. And the Chicago Tribune‘s take on it.

Find your local haunted house. Go.com

Annals of the Erosion of Privacy (cont’d.): ACLU Action Alert: Secret Evidence. “This week, the House may vote on a bill, which has

already passed the Senate, to drastically expand

government power to seize personal information

without judicial approval.

The bill, H.R. 3048, would allow law enforcement to

obtain any kind of document it wants, without first

getting a search warrant or a subpoena from a court.

These documents include any written or electronic

document possessed by an individual or, more

frighteningly, any document held by a third party (such

as bank records, credit card records, telephone

records, school records or an Internet Service

Provider’s customer records). The bill would gut the

Fourth Amendment requirement that private documents

should be searched only after a court issues a warrant

based upon probable cause.” If you agree with ACLU’s efforts to oppose this bill, two clicks will send a fax to your Congressional representative saying so.

The Presidential candidates responded in detail to queries from the New England Journal of Medicine about their positions on health policy issues: the uninsured, Medicare, patients’ rights, and quality of care.

Ritual Objects of Cosmology: “DISCLAIMER: Manipulation of the space-time continuum may have unexpected consequences. We are not responsible for the release of

quantum singularities, or any electromagnetic, gravitational, nuclear or temporal effects including orbital perturbations, annihilation of

matter, suspension of physical laws, time loops, or other consequences, intended or not, that may result from normal, excessive or improper

use of these devices.” Explore the fermion accelerator, the graviton detector, the quantum flask and other exotic devices.

Both Oppose E-Mail Tax Bill (Good, Because It Doesn’t Exist). Someone in the audience asked Hilary Clinton and Rick Lazio, at their Oct. 8 debate, about their positions on the pending legislation that would levy a tax on email messages. Now you know, I know, and the New York Times knows that that is an endlessly recycling internet myth for the endlessly gullible, but Clinton, Lazio and their moderator took the bait and ran with it (and we’re eating up the egg on their faces?)

Coming soon to a launch pad near you!

Carnahan’s Death Reshapes Senate Battle. Immediately, the chances of the Democrats gaining control of the Senate have plummeted. And Lieberman’s maintaining his candidacy for his Connecticut Senate seat while running on the Presidential ticket doesn’t help. Washington Post

“They revolted against their leader, but not against themselves,” says Leon Wiseltier. Milosevic’s overthrow is nothing like the fall of the Communist regimes a decade ago. Kostunica is no Lech Walesa, but rather an “unembarrassed…nationalist who does not see or does not wish to see that the tribal sentiment of his people…has not been the solution but the problem.” The Serbian people were outraged at what Milosevic had done to them, not what he had done to Croatians, to Bosnians, to Kosovars. In other words, “what brought him down were the unhappy consequences for Serbia of his failure in his ugly adventures. And the notion that the opprobrium that was visited upon Milosevic’s Serbia was in any way deserved — that it was the right result of Belgrade’s criminal actions — seems not to have figured prominently in the thinking of the Serbian crowds.” Wiseltier thinks more could have been asked of the Serbian people. The New Republic

Bush Gets a Free Pass From Inquiring Minds. Good to see the news media picking up on Dubya’s prevarication on his military record as well as beginning to police their own unquestioning acceptance of Republican claims that Gore lies and exaggerates. New York Observer

I’ve seen more instances of the word schadenfreude in the last month than in the previous year. Are we taking more pleasure from others’ misfurtunes recently? Here’s the result of a Google Search.

Bold enterprise: “An antimatter-aided space drive might bring deep-space missions within our grasp. Engineers at NASA and

Pennsylvania State University say that by the end of the century, spacecraft could reach the edges of the Solar

System and beyond.

They believe an antimatter drive could lead to a one-year round trip to Jupiter, a five-year trek to the

heliopause–the boundary separating the Solar System from interstellar space–and, in a 50-year trip, the Oort Cloud,

source of the comets.” New Scientist

The bombing of the USS Cole has reinforced Republican campaign rhetoric about a re-infusion for the US military, as if any added amount of manpower or military hardware could stop this kind of attack. But the incident is also the occasion to question the wisdom of US ‘engagement’ policy, says the Christian Science Monitor‘s Cameron Barr.

The idea, warmly embraced by President Clinton, is that a government

should cozy up to its potential adversaries in the hope of winning them

over.

Indeed, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh hardly seems a likely friend

of the United States. He is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s warmest

political supporter, his country has long been a home away from home

for a variety of militant groups, and his brand of politics is a good

distance short of fully democratic.

Isn’t isolationism always the refuge of some after a U.S. tragedy, or misadvanture, abroad?

Go ahead, lick your wounds. Beyond 2000

Culture, the non-issue: Has the anti-arts far-right lost the culture war against the “blasphemers and the pornographers”? Philadelphia Inquirer

Sit down and clap. It’s one of my pet peeves, and Stephen van Esch’s as well, that people give a wild standing ovation after any performance, no matter how mediocre. Why is this, and what is it doing to the arts? Spark

Former jazz piano cult figure Keith Jarrett is back from the frailty of a debilitating chronic illness. But does he have the chops to enchant jazz listeners anew, or will “sickly pallor” in his work become a “mark of heroism for the Jarrett cult”? New Statesman

NewsWatch blows the whistle on the Los Angeles Times’ struggle to start a drug scare.

A critical eye for detail. John Sutherland is an immensely popular literary critic — some thought that a contradiction in terms — who “examine(s), with forensic precision, neglected details and

apparent anomalies in classic novels and plays, and thus inject(s) new life into well-loved

literature. He has been instrumental in reviving the art of close reading at a time

when many literary academics use deconstruction and other arcane theory to place

themselves between readers and books, with the result that criticism becomes a

narcissistic end in itself, rather than a skill that deepens the pleasure of reading.”

Baby Girl Receives Arm From Twin who had died at birth. Reuters

Bizarre scenes from the “million Family March” in Washington, which involved only around several per cent of a million. Rev. Louis Farrakhan oversaw a Sun Myung Moon-like mass wedding ceremony. The Unification Church was a co-sponsor of the rally. He also didn’t come forth with any of the anti-Semitic or anti-white rhetoric for which he is renowned. And speaker after speaker urged attendees to get out and vote.

Why does an anti-depressant work for some people, but not others? One of the mysteries of psychopharmacology has been accounting for the two- to four-week latency of antidepressant response after a depressed patient starts taking the medication. A complicated cascade of neurochemical changes has to occur, resulting in altered brain functioning. Now a team of Toronto neurologists using positron emission tomography (PET scanning) have demonstrated a progressive sequence of changes in the brain function of patients in those weeks and the absence of those predictable changes in patients who will turn out to be nonresponders to the antidepressant studied, fluoxetine (Prozac). PET scanning visualizes levels of brain activity in various regions by imaging rate of glucose metabolism. The hippocampus, a “hot” region in current neuropsychiatric research on a variety of disorders, was one of the areas implicated.

The Fingerprint Mouse from Sejin America allows you to use a fingerprint to restrict access to a

computer system.’ Hey Neat!

Emerging Disease News: Ugandans Slap Quarantine on Ebola Virus Areas. A new outbreak over the last two weeks has killed 43, the WHO says. Ugandan authorities threaten those breaking the quarantine with death. The Ebola virus,

which first emerged in what was then Zaire in 1996, is a

hemorrhagic virus that causes patients to bleed to death

through every orifice — including the eyes and ears.

There is no vaccine and no known cure. It is spread through

contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids and can kill

within 48 hours.

One doctor said the symptoms were “like watching someone

dissolve before your eyes.”

Medical staff in Gulu Monday were clearly overwhelmed, but

even with the best treatment in the world, Ebola is usually

fatal. Some 793 people have died out of 1,100 cases recognized

by the WHO since 1996. Reuters

Court Says No House Vote for D.C.. Democratic principles fall prey to the letter of the law. The District of Columbia representative in Congress can’t vote just because the Constitution says that membership of the House “shall be

apportioned among the several states.”

New realities? ‘The “standard model” of the way the universe works is just

about complete. Time to start looking for a new one.’ With an incredibly lucid summary of the aforementioned “standard model”. The Economist

The New Science of Character Assassination. Even more impressive domestic counter-terrorism from Phil Agre’s Red Rock Eater mailing list. Required reading, no matter whether you like Gore for President or not, to prepare yourself for the relentless, contemptible Republican distortions about his record only likely to heat up the last days of the campaign further. This is a point-by-point examination and rebuttal of claims by Dubya’s handlers and the largely reprehensible way they are covered in the media, with appropriate links.

Skilled Terrorists, Financing Believed Behind Ship Blast

. “This wasn’t just two guys with a dream,” said a U.S. counter-terrorism expert

who asked not to be identified. “This was carefully planned. You need people with

explosives expertise, with logistics expertise, who know how to put together a cell,

know how to do surveillance. . . . This isn’t the work of a bunch of amateurs.”

The United States has spent more than $1.5 billion to upgrade security at

U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas since the August 1998 terrorist bombings of

American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 220 people.

The apparent attack on a 4-year-old warship, sheathed with half-inch armor and

bristling with the latest high-tech weaponry and radar, suggests a deliberate attempt

to humiliate those efforts.

…And apparently very easy to do. Los Angeles Times

Review of Laurie Garrett’s Betrayal of Trust: the collapse of global public health. Garrett’s last massive tome, The Coming Plague, was all you ever need to read (at over 700 pages) about the rather scary picture of emerging infectious diseases, and began the process of examining whether global public health capabilities were up to the threat. Here’s another 700+ pages that apparently completes the job. “For those who shop early for the holidays, Betrayal of Trust should be on your list. Laurie Garrett, a health reporter for Newsday and contributor to The Washington Post, has written a well-crafted and meticulously documented treatise on global public health. Before you roll your eyes, let me reassure you: This book reads like a Robert Ludlum thriller. Garrett and her critical eye travel from Minneapolis to Kikwit (the Congo), from Sura (India) to Kiev. Nothing escapes her: Plague, pollution and prostitution are all examined in turn.” The Washington Post

Love: a qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different neurological activity than liking.

“Neurologists have found that, when you see your beloved, parts of

your brain ‘light up’. The heart has nothing to do with it,

suggesting St Valentine’s Day cards should be emblazoned, not

with images of the heart, but of the medial insula.

A study by Professors Semir Zeki and Andreas Bartels of

University College, London, to be published in the journal

NeuroReport next month, confirms that being in love is

physically different from merely liking someone.

Physical effects of this brain activity may account for the

traditional sensations associated with love, including euphoria,

butterflies in the stomach, love sickness and love addiction.” Guardian

Love: a qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different neurological activity than liking.

“Neurologists have found that, when you see your beloved, parts of

your brain ‘light up’. The heart has nothing to do with it,

suggesting St Valentine’s Day cards should be emblazoned, not

with images of the heart, but of the medial insula.

A study by Professors Semir Zeki and Andreas Bartels of

University College, London, to be published in the journal

NeuroReport next month, confirms that being in love is

physically different from merely liking someone.

Physical effects of this brain activity may account for the

traditional sensations associated with love, including euphoria,

butterflies in the stomach, love sickness and love addiction.” Guardian

Love: a qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different neurological activity than liking.

“Neurologists have found that, when you see your beloved, parts of

your brain ‘light up’. The heart has nothing to do with it,

suggesting St Valentine’s Day cards should be emblazoned, not

with images of the heart, but of the medial insula.

A study by Professors Semir Zeki and Andreas Bartels of

University College, London, to be published in the journal

NeuroReport next month, confirms that being in love is

physically different from merely liking someone.

Physical effects of this brain activity may account for the

traditional sensations associated with love, including euphoria,

butterflies in the stomach, love sickness and love addiction.” Guardian

Time for contemplation…

Love: a qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different neurological activity than liking.

“Neurologists have found that, when you see your beloved, parts of

your brain ‘light up’. The heart has nothing to do with it,

suggesting St Valentine’s Day cards should be emblazoned, not

with images of the heart, but of the medial insula.

A study by Professors Semir Zeki and Andreas Bartels of

University College, London, to be published in the journal

NeuroReport next month, confirms that being in love is

physically different from merely liking someone.

Physical effects of this brain activity may account for the

traditional sensations associated with love, including euphoria,

butterflies in the stomach, love sickness and love addiction.” Guardian

Ringing disapproval. Thinkers like James Katz, communications professor at Rutgers, and David Karp, a Boston College sociologist, think they’ve figured out what’s so annoying about cell phone use in public. The phrase Katz uses is that it’s “like cutting up the park,” which I think is probably a reference to the seminal ecological article, Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968). The concept is somewhat analogous to Hardin’s, indeed. The idea is that the cell phone user is privatizing public space and indicating a disregard for others whose rights have been appropriated. It strikes me that this explains what, to a lesser extent (yes, around 50% less, because it’s just listening and not speaking) is similarly annoying about public walkman use.

Scientists control the content of dreams. However, the significance of the findings reported in this article are not really along the lines of “lucid dreaming” or anything like that. The exciting thing was the demonstration that patients with damage to the brain region called the hippocampus, who as a result have no short-term memory, nevertheless dreamed of their day’s experience. Arguably, this is one of the most direct confirmations of the role of the unconscious in shaping the content of dreams, which has recently come under fire.

Lennon Killer Had Hit List of Stars. Mark David Chapman continues to be a seriously disturbed and confused man, it seems, reading this report of his recent parole board hearing. New York Post

Do Horror Films Filter the Horrors of History? There could be no more concrete confirmation of the idea that horror films echo the fears of the day than the fact that Tom Savini, master of visceral gore as makeup artist for such films as Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th, served in Vietnam photographing corpses for the U.S. Army.

Israeli Left’s Ideals Take a Beating Amid Violence

“There is a deep crisis of conscience for the left in this country, for those of us

who were brought up believing that peace was possible, that we should pay the

price and that Arafat was our partner. The most severe

damage caused by recent events has been to the solidarity, commitment and belief

of the Israeli left in the peace process.” Los Angeles Times It’s been more painful to follow recent Middle East events than much else in the world; maybe naively, I thought at times that peace was within reach, and then to watch it fall so utterly apart, and the killings start again. However, some feel, at least in retrospect, that Israel never bargained in good faith. Read one Jewish leftist intellectual, Michael Lerner’s, anguished, apologetic appraisal of Israel’s failure in the peace process.

ATTRITION Web Page Hack Mirror. “For reference and posterity sake. And we are tired of having to visit

thirty two sites to reference these. Having them in one location is nice.” Regularly updated, this lists and archives hacks of various websites by guerrilla culture-jammers.

No more neanderthals. “I am now convinced that Neanderthals are alive and well in our

society. While we may have grown beyond our primitive huts

and scavenging ways, many Neanderthal characteristics are

with us today. Look around you; I’m sure that you could point

out a few of our primitive ancestors right now.

Now, I don’t mean the jerk who cuts you off or the moron who

pays for three bucks worth of gas with a credit card. I’m talking

about the people whose cognitive functions have not moved

beyond those of their ancestors.” It’s an interesting hook to what turns out to be a pretty prosaic essay, but I like the way it’s characterized. I’m sure you have your own examples of the survival of the neanderthal…

Terrorism: terror or tease? “People need to decide if

it’s worth maintaining an artificial state of anxiety and being

watched by the government to be protected from something

that may not exist at all.” Spark

The internet: the new source for real hip-hop.

So

here’s a recipe for success in pushing product, check this out,

you’ve got to plaster your album cover with corny computer

graphics of fat cars, dollar signs, diamonds and other material

objects, and, oh yeah, don’t forget the two busty women

(un)dressed in bathing suits and high-heels. And here’s some

advice for all you ambitious emcees: when y’all write, don’t put

any thought into your lyrics, just write about what everyone

else is writing about, be it sex, money, designer clothes,

whatever. Just make sure it sounds like either Jay Z or one of

The Hot Boys –guaranteed instant success.

Hip-hop, excuse me, hip-pop is all about sameness. You’ve got

to follow whatever’s hot to experience any kind of success,

well, economic success anyway. Spark

Double or quit “A lone researcher says he can cut an electron in two. If

he’s right, quantum physics is dead.” New Scientist

Miracle Update: Window Clean, Virgin Gone New York Daily News

Two Florida teenagers discover they have the same name, birth date, Social Security number, and the coincidences don’t end there.

‘Oz’ author sought Indian genocide. L. Frank Baum wrote, a decade before the publication of ‘The Wizard…’:

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies, inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession,

lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With this fall the nobility of the redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of

whining curs.

“The whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier

settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.

“Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable

wretches that they are. We cannot honestly regret their extermination. Lawrence (KS) Journal-World

Postcard delivered after 93 years. “A postcard delivered in the US 93 years after it was

originally sent contains only a one-word message –

“Hello”.

US Mail staff handed over the card at Joliet, Illinois,

after tracking down the relatives of its now deceased

addressee.” Ananova And whle we’re at it: Bottle-message washes up in NZ after 44 years.

Fear of Flying: Team of Aircraft Wiring Experts Finds Frequent Flaws in Jetliners; and : F.A.A. Is Ignoring Questions of

Defective Bolts, Audit Finds New York Times

Former advertisers speak… The rush is on to distance themselves from the controversial Dr. Laura show.

“…the largest mass poisoning of a population in

history… The scale of the environmental disaster is greater than any seen before; it is beyond the

accidents in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and Chernobyl, Ukraine,

in 1986.” Independent [via Robot Wisdom]

Who is buried in Yeats’ tomb?

There in the tomb the dark grows blacker,
But wind

comes up from the shore:
They shake when the

winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

Irish Times [via Robot Wisdom]

Longevity is linked to IQ. “A study of 300 individuals spanning almost 70 years suggests that

intelligence, rather than social background, may determine

whether people enjoy good health and a long life.

People who sat an IQ test at the age of 11 in 1932 were ranked

in exactly the same order when they took the exam again at the

age of 77, showing that intelligence is stable throughout life. But

researchers also found that those with high IQs tended to live

longer because they made the right health decisions during their

lives.” Telegraph

Hazards of a healthy choice. Drinking low-fat rather than whole milk may more likely infect you with food-poisoning bugs. Small dairies use pasteurizing machines designed before the popularity of reduced-fat milk and, once modified to skim off the fat, often performing inadequate pasteurization, according to new research. New Scientist

Emerging Disese News: Global disease traced to tropical logging. “Logging and the accessibility it

offers to remote forests and to

wider hunting opportunities may

play a central role in the emergence

of new diseases that imperil human

health, according to a new study by

researchers from Johns Hopkins

University School of Public Health. ” Environmental News Network /i>